


always trying to make something whole

by nextgreatadventure



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 07:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2538608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nextgreatadventure/pseuds/nextgreatadventure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Monica immediately wants to do that again, make Scully smile and say <i>alright, okay, yes</i>, let her affirm over and over again until she forgets all the bad or remembers all the good in her life, until she’s built herself an anchor or maybe a sail, whatever she needs, whatever it would take to bring her back to her own shore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	always trying to make something whole

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adventurepants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adventurepants/gifts).



> i've been wanting to write more scully/reyes for like, a decade now. so here we are. it's less organization and more haphazard feelings. i hope you can dig it. title and headings are from louise gluck's poem 'celestial music'.
> 
> THIS WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT ADVENTUREPANTS, who loves xfiles friendships as much as i do, now. <3

\---

 

**I. always moved by disaster**

 

It's not like she spends her days thinking about him (not like she used to). It's just that when he calls her up ten months after their last phone conversation and asks her to consult on a case, she agrees before the second sentence even comes out of his mouth. Any excuse to escape the late summer heat of New Orleans (not that it's much better in DC), and it's nice to know her expertise might be needed _somewhere_.

(Plus, if she's honest with herself -- and she always strives to be -- she misses him.)

 

 

Okay, it's probably not a UFO abductee cult. Not a delusional one, anyway.

Monica decides this pretty early on. She adapts, curving her presence into moral support instead.

"I don't know where we're gonna go from here," John says. Monica reaches for his hand, but her eyes are on Agent Scully across the room. "We've been looking for Mulder for months, and now..." He shakes his head, tired. "Anyway. Thanks for coming, Monica."

Her gaze skips back, forth, back again. Assistant Director Skinner has a hand to Agent Scully's back, and Scully has her hand draped across her face. 

"Of course," Monica says, though her lips are downturned. "Anytime."

 

 

But she means it, because when John calls her again two months after Bob Harvey dies in that car crash, she doesn't even hesitate. She drops everything and goes to him. She knows herself well enough by now to know that she probably always will.

"I'm sorry Mon, but Agent Scully’s life is in danger and I just don't know who else we can trust," he'd said, and she hadn't heard him sound that desperate since Luke.

She hangs up, goes upstairs to pack a bag, and books a flight in the cab on the way to the airport.

This time though, she knows she's not doing it just for John Doggett alone.

 

 

Scully is sleeping both times she pulls over for gas. Monica hesitates, because she has to go inside to pay with the cash she was given. She locks the door and chooses the pump closest to the building, so she can keep an eye out.

She hadn't asked Doggett any questions about any of this, and she doesn't ask Scully any either once she finally wakes up somewhere north of Georgia.

They hedge on the minor concern of delivering a baby in the middle of nowhere, but then it's silent for a few minutes. Monica rummages into the paper bag at Scully's feet without taking her eyes off the road.

"Here," Monica says gently, offering her a bottle of water. "And there are snacks if you're hungry."

The bottle passes hands and Monica notices how cold Scully's fingers are. She turns down the air conditioning, even though she'd rather not.

 

 

The first night is long. They are both tired and scared, though they won't admit it to themselves or to each other.

"Do you need anything, Dana?" Monica asks. There's a strip of moonlight that falls across the woman's face, neck, shoulder. Monica takes the floor but they've found a dusty old daybed for Scully.

"No thank you," is the tired but even reply.

Monica bites her lip in the darkness, shifting on the hard wood to stare up at the ceiling. Her mouth tastes like cigarettes and she hasn't slept in twenty eight hours.

"Let me know if you need anything in the night. I hope you can get some sleep." Monica says.

There's Scully's low chuckle, and Monica smiles despite herself. "That might be a big ask, Agent Reyes, but I'll try. And again, you're welcome to join me up here."

Scully had offered to share the moment they settled in, but Monica hadn't felt right about it.

"Thank you," Monica tells her. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight." Scully says, and the bed groans slightly as she shifts her thin frame. Her back is to Monica now, the moonlight curved against the white fabric at her shoulder blade. Monica spends the next hour and a half watching the woman's shoulder rise and fall as she breathes.

 

 

Monica doesn't sleep. Or maybe she nods on and off again without realizing, but either way she's definitely on an off again when Scully starts mumbling and tossing in her sleep.

Monica can't make out any words, but she's clearly having an upsetting dream. 

There's hardly a moment of hesitation as Monica sits up and slides the few feet across the floor to touch Scully's shoulder.

"Dana," she says quietly, shaking her gently. "Agent Scully."

It takes a few moments, but Scully eventually starts, turns, and forces open her eyes. Her breathing is fast and shallow, and even in the darkness Monica can see the sweat gathering at the hollow of her throat. 

"Agent Reyes," she breathes, and lays her hand distractedly on top of Monica's. "I'm sorry."

"Bad dream?" Monica asks, voice hoarse.

Scully moves her hand. "Yeah," she says, becoming more aware. "Yes." Her voice cracks and her body is still so small, and Monica watches her hand drift instinctively to her swollen belly. Scully closes her eyes. Monica thinks that she looks so exhausted and so defeated and so scared.

Suddenly, everything feels too impossible. Too surreal. Too heavy. They barely know one another (she’s not sure if Agent Scully even _likes_ her) and Monica has no idea what she’s doing, what _they’re_ doing, who’s after Scully or why. Scully’s life is in danger and her baby’s life is in danger and Monica feels very small and very helpless because she wants to help so badly but she’s not sure how. It’s not unlike how she felt when she and Agent Doggett first met years ago. She was small and helpless then, too, but she was also much younger and shouldn’t she be _stronger_ by now?

When she finally finds her voice, Monica says out loud the first thing that she thinks: "Do you want me to come lay beside you?"

And you know, sometimes she's too transparent for her own good, but right now she doesn't care if it was the right or wrong thing to say. Even though they barely know one another, Monica understands at least two things about Dana Scully: that she has more walls than anyone Monica has ever met, but that there’s _something_ about Monica that Scully responds to.

So when Scully stiffens, but then slowly, slowly begins to nod and move to make more room on the narrow mattress, Monica knows she did exactly the right thing.

"Okay, back to sleep," Monica murmurs after she has slid in behind Scully and Scully has relaxed a little. "You're having a baby tomorrow, gotta rest up. I hear it's like running the Boston marathon."

Scully chuckles again, shakily, and shifts, and when her arm brushes Monica's arm she doesn't jump away or even attempt to move it. 

(This is when Monica first has the urge to hold her, when she truly understands the desperation in Doggett's voice. The way Mulder looks at her. How the few people who love her would do absolutely anything for her.

This is when she first feels like maybe they aren’t really strangers anymore.)

Monica falls asleep for hours this time, they both do, and when she wakes to the sunshine pouring in through stained glass windows, she gets up to bring Dana some cool water.

 

 

**II. when you love the world you hear celestial music**

 

"Agent Doggett is still on crutches," Monica is saying into the telephone. 

Scully halts at the door, watching suspiciously.

"Yes, to be honest, and preferably as soon as possible," she says, and waves a _one minute_ index finger at Scully. Then, she makes an exaggerated roll of the eyes in response to something she just heard.

 _A case?_ Scully mouths.

Monica nods. She puts a hand over the mouthpiece, and fixes Scully with a sly look. "Do you think you could get a babysitter for two days?"

Scully raises her brow. "It's not outside the realm of possibility," she begins, “but--”

"Agent Scully will come with me," Reyes says into the phone.

She grins and Scully wonders, for the umpteenth time, whether she and Mulder were separated at birth.

 

 

On their first night in New Orleans, Monica points out her favorite hole-in-the-wall just off Frenchman Street and asks Scully if she’s ever had a real, honest-to-god mint julep. 

Scully says she's never even tried a seafood gumbo, and Monica looks scandalized.

"Dana," she says, very seriously.

"Monica." Scully's voice is sort of teasing, and Monica's heart does a funny backflip.

"I'm buying you dinner once we're done at the field office.” She says this with (what she hopes is) an air of finality.

Scully seems to weigh some scales in her mind, but finally they tip, and the corner of her beautiful mouth curls up as she says, "Alright. Okay."

And Monica immediately wants to do that again, make Scully smile and say _alright, okay, yes_ , let her affirm over and over again until she forgets all the bad or remembers all the good in her life, until she’s built herself an anchor or maybe a sail, whatever she needs, whatever it would take to bring her back to her own shore.

 

 

On their second night in New Orleans, Monica pulls the car over abruptly on the way back to the hotel and cuts the engine completely.

"Agent Reyes?" Scully asks, mildly alarmed.

"Shh," Monica says. "Look."

They're an hour and a half outside the city, in some tiny parish she barely remembers the name of. Scully is tired and she wants to go to bed, but they've still got an hour's worth of paperwork ahead of them.

But she does look, she follows Monica's eyeline out the window, because the woman’s curiosity is always contagious and because by now she's used to humoring her (much like she used to do with Mulder).

"Do you see them?" Monica asks.

Scully keeps following Monica's gaze, out into the woods beside the road. Once her eyes adjust, she can see the little pinpricks of gold twinkling on an endless canvass of black.

The case that brought them here has not been particularly interesting, or challenging, or exciting, but it's hard to deny that Monica herself is all of these things. She knows this place, she’s spent time loving this landscape, and it shows. Her love is always contagious, too.

"I do," Scully says slowly. She hasn't seen a firefly in years, and it’s been about that long since she last stopped to enjoy the scenery anywhere.

Monica glances at the woman beside her. “And to think we might have driven right on by.”

“They’re lovely,” Scully says. She means it.

“Impossibly,” Monica agrees, and she’s smiling, but she isn’t really looking at the fireflies anymore.

 

 

On the morning they return to Washington, storm clouds are gathering rapidly. The rain begins to fall all across the city, warm and slick and shimmering.

"There's an old New Orleans superstition," Monica tells Scully, sheltering them both with one umbrella as they wait for the car. "Bathe in rainwater collected on a full moon to forget your troubles."

Scully considers this. "Is it a full moon tonight, Agent Reyes?"

Thunder claps, and Monica smiles.

 

 

**III. events play out according to nature**

 

Sometimes, the urge to take Dana away from all of this is so strong that it fills her body like oxygen, a deep sorrow that reaches all the way around her bones, and sometimes, she has to stop and remember how to unclench her fists.

She took Dana away once before, she supposes, back in Georgia, when they were scared and still sort of strangers. Back when William was still safe inside Dana's belly and Mulder hadn't left her alone.

If she'd known Dana then like she knows her now, and if Dana had agreed, maybe they would have never even come back. What's another five hundred miles back to New Orleans, another nine back to New York? She’d have taken them even farther than that if that’s what it took to keep Dana safe (only fifteen hundred miles to Sedona and the most beautiful desert sunsets she’d ever seen, another fifteen hundred more to Mexico City, to home).

She just wishes that Scully's life was her own. Shouldn’t she at least be given that option -- the option to stop running, to stop fearing? Monica would be part of that if only Dana would let her. John would be, too.

(But Dana loves the partner she’s had for as long as Monica has had John, there’s no moving on for her from that, and it is something neither she nor John can touch, something no one can ever, ever touch, and so they just...don’t even try).

 

 

Monica gives Scully a present on her birthday, a small blue box wrapped with gold ribbon. She’d gone through Dana’s file to find the date when she’d had that numerology case -- Dana never would have brought it up herself.

The bar is noisy and full of big screens broadcasting baseball and she thinks John must have picked the location and Scully must have agreed so as not to hurt his feelings. Monica would have done the same (they both care about him more than they care about telling him the truth).

When John goes to get them drinks, Monica nudges the present across the table in Scully's direction.

"Open it," she urges, and so Scully does. 

She lifts the two heavy silver spheres from their little velvet-covered box and looks to Monica with two raised eyebrows.

"They're Chinese meditation balls," Monica explains. The low amber lighting above them makes Dana's eyes look grey, makes her hair copper and flame and Monica stumbles only slightly over the rest of her words. “They’re supposed to promote health and harmony. They were invented during the Ming Dynasty to aid in the practice of martial arts.”

“What do I do, swallow them?” Scully teases.

Monica laughs brightly. “No, you rotate them in your palm. They massage pressure points. Let me show you.”

So she takes Scully’s hand, watching her eyes carefully to make sure this is okay. It seems to be, so Monica continues to demonstrate.

“Like this,” Monica says. “I’ve noticed that you hold a lot of your tension in your hands,” she adds, and the tone is probably as close to shy as Scully has ever heard from her.

“Thank you,” Scully says, looking down at the tabletop. “That’s…very thoughtful, Monica.”

Monica smiles. “You’re welcome. And incidentally, you have a very strong life line, Dana." She traces the crease on Scully's palm with her middle finger before pulling away, silver ring glinting in the lamplight. "Don’t ever forget that.”

 

 

When she first met John, she’d been a decade younger and she’d just barely begun carving out a career for herself in the boy’s club of New York City law enforcement. She’d been a decade younger and a decade stupider and she’d met him after, _after_ , when his devastation had been so immeasurable that even if she had thought to distance herself, she’d never have escaped it in time.

By some cosmic twist of fate they’d been placed in one another’s paths, and hers had changed irrevocably.

She’s probably been in love with him for ten years, but that’s merely incidental. What matters is how she’s in his orbit, how he’s a part of her atmosphere.

What matters is how Dana is part of him, now, and how John is part of Monica, always, and how the transitive property at work here is starting to mean more to Monica than almost anything else ever has.

 

 

Dana has just put William to bed and Monica is pouring them each some wine in the kitchen.

When Dana returns, Monica holds out the glass like a tentative peace offering. She doesn't want to leave yet, and she doesn't really think that Dana wants her to, either.

 

 

One glass and Scully relaxes visibly, two and she’s closed at least an inch between them on the couch. She looks more like Dana tonight than Agent Scully, with her hair pulled back and her bare feet curled beneath her. She's wearing a soft white shirt, unbuttoned after a long day of teaching at Quantico.

Monica wants to ask her about so many things. She wants to ask about where she grew up, why she joined the FBI, how her sister died. She wants to ask about Mulder, too, but she doesn't know how to ask about _any_ of these things and she doesn't know how to stop staring at Dana's face, at her hands as they wrap around her glass, at the dusting of freckles just below her newly revealed collarbones.

She doesn't know how to stop caring so much, doesn't know how to stop _feeling_ too much, she never has, and she doesn't know if she ever will. 

"And then there was the mothman," Scully is saying, "which was, surprisingly, much more exciting than one might initially imagine…”

Monica’s mouth twists up, her brown eyes shining. "So which one was _actually_ the most exciting?" She sticks to this, to work, but it's never just work because it's the X-Files and it's a decade of Dana's life. It's personal because it has made Dana who she is now, this woman who is beautiful and hard and devastated and devastating in equal measure. Monica feels a responsibility to this work (they both do, she and John) because of this. She feels protective of it -- this work, these people -- honored even, like she's earned enough trust to be given the key to something so precious. It feels like a gift.

It's intimacy in disguise, talking like this. Monica isn't like John, she hasn't read all of the files in the basement. She prefers to hear them from Scully herself.

So Scully lets Monica stay late and Monica lets Scully talk old cases for hours, until both bottles of wine are nearly gone, until Scully turns further inward, inevitably. 

Eventually, Monica refills their glasses one last time and sets the empty bottles aside. 

Scully stares into the depths of her glass for a long, long time. "I think I remember the exact moment I realized I was in love with him," she says, and Monica is quietly amazed at her continuing to offer these few and sudden insights into such personal aspects of her life. 

She remembers telling Dana months ago that she would never betray a confidence, and she hopes that Dana confiding means she knows that Monica is safe. That she would never, ever knowingly hurt her. That she cares, and wants to listen. "When?" Monica asks softly, like she’s still worried she might spook Dana away.

"Does it really even matter, though?" Scully seems to laugh, but there's no sound from her throat. "I don't even know how long I was in love and didn't realize it. How long I resisted. But I think it was the first time we almost kissed in the hallway of his apartment building. He was so close I could barely breathe."

Monica inhales sharply because she knows how that feels, all of it, except she's never been very good at resisting. "Why didn't you? What happened?"

Scully sighs. "What always happens," and she drinks deeply from her glass. Swallows. "Another X-File, another life-threatening conspiracy. Always chasing, always running. I suppose I'm still just barely breathing, most days."

Monica frowns. "That sounds exhausting, Dana." She says it with such empathy, a hollow ache pulsing hotly somewhere beneath her ribs.

"It was," Scully agrees quietly. And then, even more softly, "it is."

As if Monica were not acutely aware of it, as if she and John wouldn't do anything for her because they know how far she has had to bury her hurt, her longing, beneath high collared sweaters and beneath being a mother to her son. 

"You remind me of him," Dana says again, in that same sudden and continual way, turning to stare at Monica with blue, blue eyes. "Sometimes. You both move through the world in the same sort of way."

Monica stills, watching her.

"But also differently," Scully goes on to say. She looks pensive, turns her face away. "So very differently."

Monica stares. "Dana," she whispers thoughtlessly, for no other reason than to hear the sound.

Something in the way Monica says her name makes Scully look back up.

"Dana." She says it again because it's all that she can think of to do.

Scully stares back at Monica for several slow seconds, and then asks, "Are you in love with Agent Doggett?"

Monica stills again. She looks up at the ceiling, not because she's avoiding the question, but because she's thinking, wanting to make sure she answers honestly. "John confuses me," she says finally, slowly and carefully. 

"In what way?"

"In the same way Mulder does you, I imagine."

Scully shakes her head, the smile she smiles then making Monica's brow furrow helplessly. "Easy answer."

"Do you want the difficult one?" Monica asks, bold, because she would tell Dana anything.

Dana must see that in her face, because she turns away again. Sometimes, Monica gets the feeling that she's too much for Dana (sometimes, she gets the feeling that she's too much for a lot of people).

But while she may turn away from Monica often, Dana never asks her to leave, never asks her to be anything but herself, and she always, always turns back.

"The difficult one goes something like this,” Monica begins. “Yes and no, but the point is that I've loved many people, and that love doesn't always return to me in the same way that I give it. I don't mind. It doesn't change me. It doesn't make me love any less. I feel indebted to John. I feel...tied to him."

Scully breathes out audibly. The look on her face says that this all feels so familiar to her. "You've been through a lot together," Scully says, as if there's not a concept in the world that she understands more intimately than this one.

"Yeah," Monica nods. "We have." A corner of her heart begins to constrict, the corner perpetually reserved for John, for Luke (whom she never met), for those three days they spent wondering if Doggett’s son would ever make it to his twelfth birthday. It’s the corner of her heart reserved for all of the years that followed and for all of the years still to come.

(But she and Dana, they’ve been through a lot together now, too.)

Scully finds Monica's eyes. "You're very patient, Monica. Very loyal."

They hold each other's gaze again for such an impossibly long time. "So are you."

And Monica wants to say a million other things to her in that impossibly long moment, wants to say _I think I know now that I'll be here for you forever, too, as long as you need me, as long as you want me_ ; wants to say _John runs through my veins like a river but you burn like fire_.

Monica opens her mouth and leans toward Dana, never ever sure what exactly might come out, just trusting that whatever it is will come right from her heart, but at that same moment William cries out from down the hall.

Scully stands up and sets her empty glass on the coffee table. As she passes behind her on the couch, Monica feels Dana's fingers sweep gently across the bare skin of her shoulder.

 

 

**iv. brave too, able to face unpleasantness**

 

Letting John go in that hospital room was one of the hardest things Monica has ever done (and she's done quite a few hard things in her young life). It didn’t even matter that he wasn’t _hers_ \-- there were never any guarantees. 

He’s back in the hospital mere weeks later, and it never even occurs to her to be angry. She is only relieved, because eventually he always comes back to them and that is all that will ever, ever matter.

“Hey there,” Monica says when he finally opens his eyes again, smiles up at them. She and Scully hold his hands and look at him and look at each other. Scully brings a hand up to cover her face, and Monica’s free hand drifts too, coming to rest on her back. It’s almost as if, in that moment, something shifts, and they can believe that Dana really does trust them as much as they both wish she would.

 

 

When it's Monica's turn, she fights, just like John told her to. She makes it out of that limbo alive because she has to. There are people counting on her now, people who need her, people she needs to see again.

She doesn't really realize just how close she came to dying until she's discharged, shrugging her jacket back on in the hospital room, and she hears their muffled voices sound from the other side of the cracked door.

“Hey, she's alright, Agent Doggett,” Dana is saying in a hushed murmur. “It’s going to be okay, John. You were right. It's over. Everything is going to be okay.”

Monica nudges the door with two knuckles, still sore from the ghost of her IV, and peers out into the hallway. Dana has her hands wrapped firmly around John’s left arm. John is slumped against the wall. Monica can’t see his face from this angle.

“I can’t lose her too, Dana,” she thinks he says.

Dana turns slightly and Monica can’t see her face anymore, either. “I know,” she whispers, so quietly that Monica almost fails to make out the next words, “neither can I.”

 

Later, Monica will wonder if she dreamt up the whole exchange in her still-groggy mind, but John treats her so gently in the days that follow and Scully...well, Scully barely looks at her for a week, which stings, but Monica takes it to mean that in their own ways they both care very, very much.

 

 

**v. always trying to make something beautiful**

 

Months pass.

Dana loses everything all over again (and still, no Mulder). John gains a small piece of desperately sought closure but the price is so high, and nothing really feels quite right anymore.

Monica tries to stay steady for them both, tries to love them through it. John is healing slowly, but she wonders if Scully is even capable of that. Sometimes Monica spends the night with her in Georgetown so that she doesn’t have to be alone. 

One day in particular, Scully makes the mistake of telling Reyes that she hasn’t gone grocery shopping in weeks, hasn’t cooked a meal at home in even longer than that. Monica shows up early in the evening, right after work, with an armful of shopping bags. She takes over Scully’s kitchen, re-stocking necessities and making tamales, until way past dark.

“Knock knock,” she says later, peeking into Dana’s bedroom. Dana is sitting cross-legged on her bed grading papers. Her face is scrubbed free of makeup, hair bundled at the nape of her neck. “I’m all done in there. There’s a big tupperware full in the fridge and I froze three more for you.”

Dana peels away her reading glasses. “Thank you,” she says tiredly, trying for a smile.

“Of course. I’ll be right down the hall if you need me?"

Dana nods, but her lips part slightly, as if she wants to say something else. After a moment, she breathes out instead. She’s even more unreadable in this moment than she is in most others. Monica squints her eyes and bites her lip. “Okay then,” she says finally, deciding to simply surrender this one. “Goodnight, Dana.”

 

 

Monica doesn’t sleep. She stares up at the ceiling of Dana’s guest room (which was William’s only a month earlier) and thinks too hard about everything.

She spends a while thinking about her career, where she's been and where she's headed, but when that gets too stressful she closes her eyes and tries to imagine something soothing. She imagines the late summer sun against her face, imagines that she’s sitting next to her abuela in the backyard of the home she was raised in (her abuela used to sing to her sometimes, especially on lazy summer evenings like the one she’s thinking about now). She thinks about the little bodega that was around the corner, how she’d sneak money from her mama’s purse to buy bottles of cold coke from the sweet man behind the counter who always remembered her name but whose name she can’t remember anymore.

She thinks about Dana. She thinks about John.

(Six nights ago, Monica was sitting beside him in Dana’s apartment while they waited for her to come home. There had been a case they'd wanted to look over with her, so they let themselves in with the key she'd given them months ago, and they were sitting on the couch in silence, waiting.

Somewhere, a clock had been ticking. They had been so aware of one another’s presence, and John’s hand was only inches from her own. The day before had been Sunday, the day John had spread Luke’s ashes at the beachside.

Monica had been tired and still hurting for them, both John and Dana, and she didn’t want to wait around anymore and pretend like she didn’t care if another chance never came. They had all been through too much for that. 

So somewhere in the background of Dana’s apartment the clock ticked four more beats and then Monica had leaned over and kissed him, softly. She kissed him like it was nothing (except it was everything), but when he started to melt beneath her, she twisted over him, eased one of her knees between both of his, pulled his face to hers with her hands and _kissed him_ the way she had always, always wanted to.

And it hadn't feel wrong. It hadn't felt like bad timing. It had felt brand new, in an old familiar sort of way, with her hands cupped gently around his face. 

Later she had drifted a hand to his chest and wound his loosened tie double around her fist; his hands had slid around her hips and she had tilted them into his palms, heart beating faster, faster, faster. All she'd wanted was to pour her whole self into that moment for him, pour all of the sadness and love she'd ever felt for him from her body into his. 

She had hoped that he understood what she was trying to say to him then: that he would always be the bravest and best man she knew.)

 

 

The guest room door creaks open around four AM and by the time Monica sits up, her hand is already beneath her pillow, resting on her gun.

"It's just me,” murmurs Scully from the doorway.

Monica breathes out. Relaxes her hand. "Dana. Is everything alright?"

Dana seems to hesitate. Monica can see her fiddling with the door paneling, can see the way her body is swaying slightly. A moment later she tries to speak, but it turns into an incoherent sob.

“Come here,” Monica says immediately, and Scully does.

The mattress dents and Scully’s body fits itself in against her own. It’s been awhile, but Monica remembers this, what the weight of Dana’s body feels like next to hers. A beat passes, and Monica hesitates, but then (carefully, carefully) she wraps an arm around her, just below her ribs.

So often, Monica allows herself to follow her instincts and so often, they serve her well: the small gesture seems to provide some tangible relief, seems to set into motion some series of hairline cracks that travel through Dana’s body in a string of trembles, aftershocks, and Monica knows now that Dana had already been up half the night crying before she decided to come in here.

She whispers Scully’s name. She whispers it again, and again, in a way that sounds like _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry_ and _you should have come to me sooner_.

Dana wraps her hand around Monica’s forearm. Her skin is so cold.

“I miss him, Monica,” Scully whispers. “I miss him _so much_.”

Monica doesn’t even need to ask, because it’s both of them, William and Mulder, always. “I know,” she whispers back. It feels like her heart is breaking too, just from being so close.

In the silence, Scully shakes quietly, breathes in and out. Monica curls closer, tightens her hold. She expects Dana to let her, and Dana does let her, but what she doesn't expect is the way Dana rolls over and tucks her head into the crook of Monica's neck.

This she does not expect, not at all, and she barely stifles a gasp because Dana's warm breath is suddenly hitting the slope of her shoulder and her hair is brushing softly against Monica's cheek. The sensations are lot to process, and Monica's fingers tighten in reflexively against Dana's spine.

"You're freezing, Dana," she manages a few seconds later, but she doesn't sound so steady.

"Am I?"

Monica uses her free hand to reach out and tug the covers over them both. "Here," she says. Her voice is steady again, mostly. In the silent moments that begin to pass, she tentatively starts to trace her fingertips up and down Dana's back. She hopes Dana won't try to leave. She hopes she'll stay exactly like this for exactly as long as she needs to. Forever, if that's what it takes.

Eventually, Monica feels Dana's breath even out. Monica thinks she might be asleep, but then she speaks.

"Your heart is still racing, Agent Reyes."

Monica freezes, stills her hand for one endless, terrifying moment, and then she just...laughs. She laughs, and so Scully laughs too (though it still sounds an inch away from breaking, from shattering all over again).

It's not like it's a secret, the way Monica feels about her. It's not as if Scully isn't fully aware that Monica all but worships her. But Dana is hurting, and she needs--

\--it occurs to her, then, that she isn't exactly sure what it is that Dana needs. So Monica pedals right on past the beautiful awkwardness of the previous moment and asks her.

Scully lifts her head. In the semi-darkness Monica can't be sure, but she thinks Dana's eyes slip to her mouth, and then close, and then she's pressing her forehead back into the crook of Monica's neck. "This," she murmurs.

Monica swallows. “Of course,” she whispers back, tightening her hold, “of course.”

 

 

And you know, for a while after that, everything is sort of okay again.

 

 

**vi. always trying to make something whole**

 

“Well, well, well,” the familiar, sweet, laughing voice says on the other line, right into Scully’s ear. “It’s been a while.”

A moment ago she’d been close to tears, but now, Scully manages a (shaky, still not herself) chuckle. “Boy, you got that right.”

It’s been at least four months, maybe five. Surely not six, Scully thinks, but suddenly she’s not so sure. Monica doesn’t seem to care how long it’s been, though. She just keeps on talking like they’d had lunch yesterday, like Scully hadn’t just called her out of the blue on a Thursday evening in January because she’d been tired and overwhelmed and lonely (dialing Agent Reyes’ number was instinctual more than it was anything else).

“Did you hear about our grand tour of Branson, Missouri? We’re not on the X-Files anymore but I swear to god, Dana, John has a knack for signing us up for the wackiest assignments. We almost met Dolly Parton.”

Dana is laughing now, wiping at her eyes. “Jesus,” she says. “No. I got your email but I haven’t had the chance to respond. Lest we forget however, you, too, have instigated your fair share of wacky assignments, Agent Reyes."

“Ha, ha.” Monica's eye roll is something Scully can see clearly in her mind's eye. “Yes, we are all aware that I am forever an easy target. How are you, Dana? How’s Mulder?”

“Oh, god. You know.” It’s Scully who’s rolling her eyes, now, still wiping beneath them.

Monica sighs sympathetically. “At least the world didn’t end. At least there’s that.”

“Yeah,” Scully says. “At least there’s that.”

 

 

 

“I think you should go back to this priest and talk to him,” Monica is saying seriously. 

Scully cranes her neck to glance out the window. It’s late now, the hospital parking lot is much emptier than it was when she got here this morning. The halls are mostly quiet. Scully breathes out. “I wouldn’t know what to say.”

On the other end of the line, Monica stretches out on her couch. Closes her eyes. “Speak from your heart, Dana. You need answers.”

“Can I be honest with you?” Scully asks, even though it’s a silly question because Reyes is maybe the only person she can always, always be truthful to. “I’m terrified. I’m angry. At Father Joe, at Mulder, at myself for pushing him into this. I'm mad at the disease this little boy has. To be perfectly honest, I'm mad at God.”

Scully laughs, and Monica says her name softly.

"I just don't know if talking to Father Joe will do any good," Scully sighs.

"I think you know you have to try," Monica presses gently. "What he said obviously means something to you."

Scully taps a finger against her desk. "I thought this was over. I'm done chasing monsters in the dark, Monica."

"I know," Monica says. "I know. But I don't think it quite works that way, Dana."

Scully sighs again. “You’re right,” she says. “You’re always right.”

Monica grins. “Thank you for finally admitting it.”

 

 

 

Scully is leaning back in her desk chair, cradling the phone between her ear and shoulder. 

“It’s because you _are_ are a mother, Dana,” Monica is saying softly. “It’s about William. It’s always going to be about William. I think Mulder is right about that.”

Scully breathes out. “I don’t know how to turn this into something good. If the time comes and I have to let that little boy go, how can I even begin to…” and she falters, draping a hand over her face. “God. How do I even begin to know how to do that again, Monica?”

“Hey,” Monica says gently, the way she always used to, like she’s giving Dana permission to not be okay for a little while. “You do your best. That’s all you can ever do. And don't forget to just _breathe_."

And Monica _knows_ , she was there with William when Mulder was not. She was there for that entire year, dependable and warm and _present_. Monica can reach Scully in a way that no one else can for this very reason. She can reach her with less than ten words (sometimes even Mulder cannot do this, not with an entire dictionary at his disposal).

So Scully breathes. “Thank you."

 

 

 

Monica is looking out the kitchen window into a deep night sky (no stars, never any stars in DC, not even in winter) when she says softly, “I miss hearing your voice, Dana.”

Scully’s eyes flutter closed. She’s standing in her darkened office now and she has to reach out to steady herself against the wall. It’s a lot, hearing this. It’s strange that despite how much stability Monica offers, sometimes, seamlessly, that stability turns into something more. Something like an ache.

“I miss hearing yours,” Scully murmurs back without thinking.

Monica’s smile feels like something tangible through the cell line. “It’s been, what, six months? How long is your hair now?”

Scully laughs, but Monica says, “No, seriously, tell me."

Scully sighs, shakes her head, a hand coming up to pluck the elastic from her braid. She combs her fingers through it. “Way past my shoulders. I haven’t had it cut in ages. Probably not since we last saw each other.”

“Neither have I,” Monica says. “I bet you look stunning.”

And Scully brings her other hand up, presses her phone closer to her ear, as though it would even make a difference in the distance between them. "Are you flirting with me, Agent Reyes?"

Monica laughs and it sounds the way caramel tastes. "Yes. Should I stop?"

Scully smiles. "Nothing ever stopped you before."

"Well in that case. What's your sign? Come here often?"

And Scully laughs, and leans her head softly against the wall, and imagines again that everything will be okay.

 

 

 

“Well,” Reyes sighs. It's so late, almost three, maybe four in the morning. “You should get some sleep, Dana. Tell Mulder hi from us. Tell him he still owes me for that newspaper clipping around Halloween.”

“I will,” Scully says.

“And if he keeps giving you trouble, you call me,” Monica says fondly, mock-sternly, because she knows that Scully will love him through anything. That even when Mulder leaves he always comes back because he can’t live with her and he can’t live without her. Scully and Mulder cannot live with or without one another, and Monica knows this. Everyone knows this. 

“Oh, I don’t doubt that I will,” Scully says.

“If he gets out of line just tell him his name is stupid -- what kind of a grown man is named Fox? -- that always seemed to worked for me."

This makes Scully laugh, and on the other line, Monica closes her eyes. She wants to tell her to do that again. "Friendly reminder that I could be there in an hour, if you wanted me to be."

It's tempting, it's so tempting, but Scully shakes her head. "Some other time."

"Okay." A pause. "I really do like to hear your voice, Dana. You should call me more often."

"I will," Scully promises, and she means it, because Monica has been nothing but always, always there for her.

 

 

 

Dana gets home while it's still dark, but only just. The sound of her keys hitting the jar next to the door makes Mulder's voice sound from his office.

"You're back awfully late, g-woman."

Scully nudges the door open and dodges a paper plane. "I was talking to Agent Reyes. Lost track of the time."

Mulder feigns a frown. "You never do that with me."

"Don't be jealous, Mulder." Scully pecks his cheek, moving to shrug off her coat. "Agent Reyes is special."

"Yeah, yeah," Mulder sighs, leans back in his chair. And then more seriously, "did you find anything?"

Scully glances around at the newspaper clippings and file folder contents scattered across Mulder's desk and walls. He has certainly found something in this new FBI case, something he's been sorely lacking these last years. There's a fire back in his eyes.

And in that moment, Scully remembers to breathe again. "Yeah," she says. "Faith."

 

 

\---


End file.
